Being as how it’s St. Patrick’s Day:
Drogheda County Louth’s Pierce Brosnan, whose film company’s titled Irish Dream Time: “I live in Malibu where the biggest problem is your neighbor has a bigger garden — but foremost I’m an Irishman.” . . . Bill Clinton: “Know the best thing about being Irish? The other Irish.” . . . Mary Higgins Clark: “I’m no author. I’m an Irish storyteller.”
Ballymena, North Ireland’s Liam Neeson: “I was Guinness’ brewery forklift truck driver there and want to end my days doing that again. Returning periodically keeps me on an even keel. Whatever bothers me I can see my way through. That simple life cuts through the B.S. Even my poodle Molly and retriever Ceilidh, which means ‘Irish Dance,’ have Celtic names.”
Gabriel Byrne: “I bought a 19th-century County Kilkenny farmhouse. I made a killing. Sold it for three times.” . . . Malachy McCourt once told me: “Only middle of the night I don’t think about being Irish. That’s when I think about my prostate.” . . . Michael Flatley: “Here they tell me, ‘Good luck, Irish’. There they say, ‘See ya, Yank.’ ”
Writer Frank McCourt, who immortalized the auld sod: “Irish have a sense of music. A song for all and always someone to sing it to.” . . . Matthew Broderick: “Me, my wife, the family go to my mother’s house in Donegal every September.” . . . Christine Quinn: “My grandparents were from little spit of land Schull. Dad’s from western County Cork. Because his father’s from Clare, they called my parents ‘a mixed marriage.’ ”
Comedian Colin Quinn: “St. Pat’s. A cultural event. They march down Fifth and stagger up Sixth. Where else can you drink beer with a 300-pound redhead apprentice electrician in a Jets jacket? My family’s in Belfast. I went. I called them. None called me back. To me Irish poetry starts with the F-word.”
Awhile back I was in Ballymacoda village’s Skibbole, outside Youghal, near Knockmealdown mountains enroute to Cork 2 ¹/₂ hours from Dublin. Angela Lansbury’s house was nearby. So’s Jeremy Irons’ castle. Returning, I asked why NYC cardinals — Cooke, O’Connor, Egan, Dolan — are always Irish. Said Ed Koch: “Who knows? I’m just grateful it’s not just Irish mayors.”
As they say at Langan’s good ol’ Irish bar: “May Erin go braless.”
Remembering ‘Rocky’
In early ’70s, every Thursday Sylvester Stallone sat back of 56th & Lex’s SC Camera store reading actors’ want-ads newspaper Backstage. He’d written a story about a down-and-out boxer. He told the owner: “Someday I’m going to make it.” He knocked on doors. Nobody listened.
The owner’s son still has Sly’s photo in boxing trunks, signed, “To Ari, Keep Punching.”
So at the “Rocky” Winter Garden opening, he reminisced with me: “I remember it all. Now, sitting out front, watching a kid play me who was age 2 when I was making this is surreal.
“I remember real punches making those films. Dolph Lundgren, ‘Rocky IV’, put me in the hospital. Hit my chest so badly docs thought I was in a car accident. In ‘Rocky I,’ Carl Weathers broke my jaw. I never let on he actually did that. Wouldn’t give him that satisfaction of knowing he did such a great job.
“In real life, can’t everybody be a No. 1 champ. A fighter tries his best, but he knows and we know he’s not the top. He can only give it his all — just like the rest of us.”
In a neck brace, needing to keep an appointment, this lady managed herself into “my most comfortable bra” then eased into a new bus-like cab where the passenger, up high, meets a chatty driver’s rearview mirror eyes. Enroute, her pain was “crippling” so, “despite his eyes on me, I wriggled out of that double-D bra, stuffed it in a pocket, and he never witnessed my Houdini move.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.